CHATHAM COUNTY -- Few things in the hunting world are more fun than hunting rabbits with beagles. As a teenager in South Carolina, I'd go with friends who had beagles and marvel as the tri-colored hounds charged through seemingly impenetrable thickets baying their fool heads off as they trailed unseen quarry.

As much as I enjoyed those trips, it had been years since I had been swallowed up in the brier thickets with hounds and bunnies. A recent trip reminded me how much I'd been missing.

After meeting at a fast-food restaurant in Cary, a caravan of eight pickup trucks, most with dog boxes in the beds, headed to the Chatham County property of Duane Beckner, who had allowed the group to hunt his land. His 70-acre tract is a carefully managed wildlife hot spot, with food plots, fruit trees and edge cover faithfully cultivated to benefit available fauna.

It wasn't long after the hounds were loosed than the soulful "awe-ooo, awe-ooo, awe-ooo" of a baying dog proclaimed the presence of a rabbit in a pine thicket. The blaze orange-clad hunters spread about 50 yards apart as the chase ebbed and flowed and various dogs sounded off and quit.

Pursuit ended when Chris "Dead Eye" Wood of Zebulon, who had three hounds in the pack, potted the rabbit with one shot from his scatter-gun. Wood held the rabbit at arm's length as the hounds arrived sporadically, letting them worry the quarry they had trailed but hadn't seen during the 15-minute chase. When asked which dogs were his, Wood replied with a laugh, "The three that were running that rabbit."

There were more than three hounds around him as he deposited the rabbit in the pouch of his game vest. In the distance, the sounds of other chases echoed through the underbrush, with the occasional gun report announcing the end of a run or the continuation of one. Wood, 37, wasn't in a hurry to rejoin the hunt, preferring to lean back on a wood pile and listen to the action as it unfolded unseen.

"It's just starting to come back," he said of this year's rabbit hunting. "Right after [Hurricane] Fran, it was great, with all the cover the storm provided. Now, we kill six to eight every time we go."

But killing a rabbit seemed to be pretty low on the list of priorities for this group. As different chases commenced and different hunters pulled a trigger, the level of chatter rose as barbs were traded for missed shots and kudos for the occasional successful shot.

"I just love to hear the dogs run, and I've been hunting since I was 8 years old," said Walter Watkins, 52, of Raleigh, who owns a heating and air conditioning business and who had eight dogs running that day. "I can tell you every dog out there by their voice.

"We might get a shot 60 percent of the time, but it's more fun when people miss."

It sounds like a laid-back good time, and it is, but don't let the facade fool you. These are men who will pay $800 to $2000 for a proven dog out of superior stock, making some of the sloe-eyed hounds worth about $100 per pound. Some beagles may fetch five times as much, which makes hasenpfeffer a very expensive dish.

As the morning hunt wound down, Beckner had a surprise for the group - lunch. He and hunter Larry Tysor of Raleigh were members of the same wildlife club, and Beckner had grilled burgers and franks in the front yard. Hunters filtered out of the woods trailed by dogs that seemed to sense a break was in the offing. A couple of 2x12s on sawhorses provided a table as the hunters wolfed down the victuals and exchanged small talk.

"This is the first catered hunt I've been on," said Wood, munching on a hamburger.

The dogs took advantage of the break to beg handouts from the hunters, who willingly obliged.

Lunch ended abruptly when an errant dog, tired of the repast, sounded off in a bottom, prompting most of the party to scramble for the guns and follow the commotion to yet another thicket.

Several more rabbits fell to the guns, and several others escaped before threatening clouds gave way to a misty rain. With enough action for the day, hunters and hounds trekked back to the trucks. Guns were unloaded, dogs were loaded only to doze as soon as the dog box doors were clipped shut, and the caravan of trucks slowly made its way off the property.

My ears were ringing with baying dogs and barking guns as I drove home, stirring memories of the same scenes from the swamps around Manning, S.C., 20 years earlier. I hope history repeats itself, for after years of chasing bird dogs I'm glad to have rediscovered the joy of beagles and bunnies.